MOSAICS: A Thriller (8 page)

“It doesn’t have to be rape to be sexual.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. Think about the Broadway murder, two summers ago. Victim found sprawled on the floor, naked, stabbed twenty-nine times, of which fourteen in the groin. Her clothes were never found.”

Sat took a long swig of C
oke. “I remember that. The killer stabbed her eyes, too. There’s no knife here, but there’s acid, which serves the same purpose.”

I made a face. “Yeah, but he takes of
f the socks and then backs away. What the hell, now that he’s killed her he gets frigid?”

“You’ve heard Washburn. The guy’s still exploring.”

I swallowed another chunk of meat. “The Jane Doe down in Baldwin. Naked, again, stabbed in the groin and chest. Left breast missing, right nipple bitten off. Sat, these perps go for the stuff they can’t get from women—that’s why they kill them. Our guy isn’t interested in any of that. He’s got a different agenda, and he leaves the tiles behind to tease us.”

Satish shrugged, my argument no more convincing than Washburn’s. “He’s just not there yet. He’s got a repressed Oedipus complex.”

“Bullshit. Guesswork based on some theory that we all want to murder our fathers and fuck our mothers.” I scraped the bottom of my food box and sucked the last noodle. “Oedipus’s myth isn’t about that.”

Sat
squashed his box, drained his Coke, then tossed everything in the trash. “No? What’s it about, then?”

“About a bunch of fools who thought they could get away from their own fate. Truth is, no matter how hard you try, your fate is always gonna come back to bite your ass.”

Satish crossed his arms and leaned back, one of his dreamy smiles plastered across his face. “Sounds like somethin’ my old man would’ve said.”

He said nothing else for a little while, the skin between his brows pinched together like pizza dough. “You know what this reminds me of, Track?”

I rose and slid my jacket on. “Can’t wait to hear it,” I said. 

He gave me a puzzled look. “Jeez. You missed me that bad, huh?”

“In some twisted sort of way.”

Our steps resonated in the deserted hallway.

Strange night to be catching a faceless killer
.

Satish was lost in one of his stories. “It reminds me of
prasada
,” he said.

But then again, all killers are faceless and all summer nights have a tendency to be strange
.

“
Prasada
?” I repeated.

Satish pressed the elevator call button and bobbed his head. “It means ‘cooking for the gods.’ It’s a big deal in India. There’s a whole ritual that goes with it: you have to thoroughly wash before and after cooking. You can’t taste the food while you make it. You’re supposed to meditate and pray as you cook. And you can’t eat until after the gods have eaten.”

“Good luck with that.”

The elevator chim
ed, the doors slid open and we stepped inside. “As always, you miss the point, Track. Ma would make
rasgulla
to please the gods. She’d place two or three in a special plate and set the plate in front of the altar. After that, we’d all bow our heads and close our eyes while she’d recite
Om Namo Narayanaya
over the rumble of our empty stomachs. When done reciting all prayers, she’d return the food to the kitchen and we could finally eat.”

“So, the gods wouldn’t literally eat the food?”

Satish winked. “Except one time they did.”

We
exited the elevator. The lobby was dimly lit and had the distinct smell of old building material and wood decay, mixed with remnants of fried beans from back when the cafeteria was there.

Outside, hot air yawned in our faces. I jingled my car keys and pondered. It was past dinnertime, the honks of traffic had tapered off, and downtown was cloaked in a hazy sunset. Cruisers at the end of their shifts turned into the San Pedro parking lot, while others left to prowl the night beats. Pink clouds spilled into the sky and reflected off the glass façade of Parker Center.

“Ma threw a fit when she opened her eyes and one ball of
rasgulla
was missing. And then she started the investigation. Except, she already knew the perpetrator.”

“She did?”

“Well, me and my brother, we always got excited about
rasgullas
. We helped Ma making them, but we were forbidden to even lick our fingers. It was torture.”

“So you ate one?”

“Uh-uh, we did not. But Ma was convinced we did. Our hands were sticky and there was sugar on our cheeks. She sent us to our room. The gods were very mad at us.”

I winked. “I thought the gods had eaten the missing
rasgulla
.”

Satish walked to his car and unlocked it. “Not the gods. Our baby sister Rhani, who’d just started crawling. My old man came back from work, picked her up, and asked, ‘Why is Rhani’s face all sticky w
ith sugar?’” Satish chuckled, unlocked his car and slid behind the wheel.

“I see,” I said. “So your mom had the perfect profile for the
perpetrator, except it led her to the wrong suspects.”

Satish scrunched his brows together. “Perfect profile? What are you talking about?”

“You said this is what our meeting with Washburn reminded you of!”

He wobbled his head
and started the car. “Oh, that. Nah. I just miss my old man is all.” And with that, he backed out of his parking spot, bade me goodnight, and drove off, leaving me to cradle my own thoughts on profiling, murder suspects, and what the hell I wanted in life. 

Once a killer, always a killer.

Danny Mendoza. I slit his throat when I was sixteen. And then stabbed his eyes. Except I recalled nothing of that. All I recalled was his slurred voice, his breath heavy with dope and nicotine, telling me how he’d tortured fourteen-year-old Lily Germano, how he made her beg for her life, before he closed a noose around her neck and strangled her.

The judge denied bail based on the cruelty of the crime. Every Monday of my one-month pretrial term, the jail psychiatrist came to the interview room with his perfectly knotted tie and clean-shaved face. He smelled of sugarcoated lies and ordinary mediocrity, of unexciting sex and conventional middle-class life, of a suburban two-story home with a blonde wife installed on the front doorsteps.

Of everything I never had growing up. And he was staring at me, judging me.

I have no doubt.

He smelled so damned normal.

The nights I’d spent curled up in a dirty cot, heavy steps echoing in the background. Keys rattling, inmates moaning, kids—just like me—screeching, sneering, snoring, crying, wrapped in vicious smells that crawl
ed under my skin, into my bones…

You know nothing about it,
I snarled.
Nothing.

My rage churned a smile out of his thin lips. His finger slid
toward the panic button, poised.

Killing fulfills your anger, Ulysses, doesn’t it
?

I
did
kill again. As a cop, clean shootings. Yet that triumphant little smile of his came back every time I pulled the trigger, like a feather tickling the inside of my ego. To remind me what I am. And what I’ll never be.

No matter how hard you try, fate is always gonna come back to bite your ass.

Like Oedipus.

It’s in your genes, Ulysses, your fate switched when you were six… Every time you collect a new trophy, i
t reminds you of what you are.

And w
hat you’ll never be.

SIX

____________

Wednesday, July 1

“I hear your man did it again.” Malcolm Olsen squinted his small, beetle eyes trying to look earnest. He was trying too hard. A wrinkle on his left cheek curled around the corner of his mouth and came to rest on his chin like an old scar. He leaned back against the wall, laced his fingers across his stomach and smirked. A smirk never looks good in an orange jumpsuit, especially the kind that has CDCR—California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation—embroidered over the breast pocket.

Satish sat at the long end of the table, facing the white cinder block wall, and I at the short end, opposite from Olsen. There were no windows, only a gray, heavy metal door, and a cc camera looking down on us from one corner of the ceiling. A bounty of disinfectant sprays lingered over all surfaces and yet failed to cover the stale smells of recirculating air, un-showered humanity, and general ripeness that permeated the place.

I undid the knot of my tie. It didn’t help much—the nausea had already kicked in. It didn’t matter that I was wearing civilian clothes instead of an orange jumpsuit, or that the hogs—jail guards—nodded at me instead of sneering and yelling to my face. The nausea kicked in as soon as Satish and I walked through the double metal doors and a co
rrectional officer handed us our visitor badges.

Smells remain engraved in the brain like lovers’ initials on a tree—long after the love is gone.

Satish plucked a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, opened it, and set the offering on the table in front of Olsen. “We’re not sure, Mr. Olsen,” he said. “A birdie told us
you
might have something to do with Charlie Callahan’s murder.”

Olsen squinted. He shot his chin up and regarded both Satish and me very carefully. His complexion had absorbed the dull and gray co
lor of the walls. A sagging wrinkle across his neck was reminiscent of his pre-jail chubbiness. Brown hearing aids sat behind his ears—from a trauma or genetic condition, I guessed, as he didn’t look older than fifty. He picked up the pack of cigarettes, plucked one out, and pocketed the rest. Satish produced a lighter and lit his cig. I inhaled and held my breath. I couldn’t hold for too long and eventually resigned to yet another reek filling up the room.

“I did
n’t do the fag,” Olsen said, sucking on his cig.

“We heard you weren’t exactly fond of him, either,” I interjected.

Olsen unplugged the cigarette from his mouth and blew smoke toward me. I made a face. He stretched his lips and showed me two rows of yellow teeth, too small for his big mouth. “You don’t smoke, Detective?”

“Hate the smell,” I said.

His lips stretched further.

Satish rapped his fingers on the table. “My partner gets easily irritated. I suggest you help us out, Mr. Olsen,
so you can enjoy your cigarette and we can be out of here soon.”

Olsen wiped the smile off his face. “What’s in it for me?”

I shifted in my chair. “Besides the cigarettes?”

Satish sent me
a sideways glance. “We can talk to people, Mr. Olsen,” he said. “We’re after Amy Liu’s killer, whether the killer did it again, like you say, or he’s just a copycat. Help us out and we’ll help you out.”

Olsen shook his cigarette and tiny flakes of ashes fluttered to the ground. “I already said what I know. To the other cop
s. They didn’t help me out. Why would you guys be any different?”

Nausea crawled from my stomach up to my throat. I banged a hand on the table in frustration.

Olsen leaned forward and locked his eyes onto mine. “You hate it here, Detective, don’t you? You hate it just like me. You hate the smells, I can tell from your face. The banging, the shouting, the moaning—I don’t care for any of that.” He shrugged and tapped the hearing aid behind his right ear. “I just turn these off and I can forget all of that. But the smells…” He sucked on the last bit of his cigarette, dropped it to the floor and crushed it with the tip of his shoe. “Can’t tune out the smells. Urine. Shit, from when the smart asses clog the latrines. Sweat. Freaking disgusting.”

“I hear Vacaville is better, Mr. Olsen,” Satish said. “We can get you a transfer. Tell us what you told the other cops and we’ll work from there.”

Olsen lifted his chin and squinted. He dipped a hand in his pocket and plucked a new cigarette out of the pack. This time Satish didn’t reach for the lighter.

I pushed my chair backwards and got to my feet. “We’re wasting our time, Sat,” I said and walked to the door.

Olsen stuck the cigarette between his lips. “Nail polish,” he said.

I turned and looked at him.

“It’s your clue. I told the other cops, too, but they didn’t believe me. There was a car that night. I saw it when I walked the dog. An Oldsmobile Alero, black, one of the older models. The driver was smoking. When I walked by, he rolled up the window and left. And I smelled nail polish after the car.”

“Nail polish?” Satish repeated.

He snapped. “What do you expect from homos?”

Satish asked, “You got a plate number?”

“Arizona plates. That’s all I remember.”

I strode back to the table, turned the chair around, and straddled it. “What night, Olsen? If you’re gonna help, you might as well try a little harder than some manicure bullshit.”

His lips closed around the cigarette butt, his eyes smirked. “The night the fag got whacked, of course.”

I banged a hand on the table. “Wrong,” I said. “According to your wife, the night Callahan was killed you stepped out to walk the dog at least one hour before the murder. If you saw the car leave—”

“So? He could’ve driven around the block and come back. Like he’d done the week before. And the one before, again. Same car. Same vague nail polish smell.”

Satish straightened up and leaned both elbows on the table. “And why do you believe this guy in the Alero was after Callahan, Mr. Olsen?”

Olsen bit on the cigarette and narrowed his eyes. “Couple weeks earlier. Car was there. Fag comes out of his house and sees it. He gets nervous. Starts walking away. Car follows him. They talk. Doesn’t look good.”

“You hear what they say?”

He flashed us a yellow grin. “Uh-uh. That’s when I yelled ‘Go away fags’ at them and the car vanished.”

The grin got wider and prouder.

My stomach knotted. I pushed the chair away from the table and walked to the door. The correctional officer waiting outside the interview room shot to his feet.

“Is everything okay, Detective?”

“Your closest restroom,” I said.  

I didn’t bother latching the
stall door behind me. I kicked up the lid, bent on my knees, and retched.

*  *  *

“A smell for a clue?” Satish protested.

“All my clues are smells,” I replied.

“Oh, please. Nail polish? If at least he’d given us a license plate…”

“Smoked meth smells like acetone, nail polish remover. Weren’t there traces of meth in Callahan’s pockets?”

Satish shook his head. “To you it may smell like that. The only thing I smell around meth users is their armpits.”

“I’m not the only one with a sensitive nose. The guy wears hearing aids. If he can’t hear, chances are he’s got a good sense of smell.”

Satish shrugged. “Nail polish in a black Alero. He could’ve smelled it from some girl doing her nails with her feet propped against the window. That’s as helpful as a cell phone without signal.”

The foggy, cooler days of June were over. It was ten in the morning and downtown was a sweltering pot of metal, smog, and asphalt. In a few weeks, the wildfires would start raging the foothills, adding a new fragrance to the mix.

We left Starbucks at the corner with First and crossed the street toward Parker Center, our headquarters, Satish sipping his iced latte, and I savoring the aftertaste of a double shot espresso.

I said,
“The whole scalping and skin removal has me wondering. Why wasn’t Charlie Callahan scalped? I’m not buying the theory that the guy had worked out a new ritual the second time around—that the first time he acted on instinct, and the second time he had more time to plan ahead.”

“That’s because that theory came from Washburn, and you don’t like Washburn. Olsen will never admit to whacking Callahan. He knows we’ve got nothing on him.”

“But then why risk it and give us a bogus story?”

We walked a few steps without saying anything.

“June’s gone already,” I said, squinting through sunglasses.

“You know,” Satish replied, “Cohen was right about the scalping. I looked it up. Apparently, the colonists scalped Native Americans and sometimes even stripped them of their skin. Native Americans started it as retaliation.”

I considered. “
What he did to Amy didn’t look like retialiation.”

Satish sucked from his straw and nodded. “I agree. Cohen said it himself, it was a meticulous and careful job.”

A DASH bus stopped by the curb. I raised my voice over the growling of the engine. “You said Katie looked up scalping in the databases and found nothing.”

“Sh
e tried both VICAP and NCIC,” Satish said, “and found a gruesome case in Montana. The victim was not only scalped but also skinned and partly mutilated. Her husband was convicted two years later.”

The NCIC and VICAP were national investigative repositories for all violent crimes in the country. If scalping had been done before in some other crime or murder, all details of the case and
the investigation would have been indexed and filed in at least one of the databases.

My eyes
strayed from the bus, now closing its doors and attempting to merge back into traffic, and the shiny façade of Parker Center, a lonely cloud reflecting off its windows. A van from one of the L.A. news station was parked in front of one of our patrol cars.

“They’re prowling again,” I commented.

Satish nodded. Now that the Callahan case was back in the news, the news vultures had come back to the nest.

The rattling of a jackhammer
joined the honks of downtown traffic. Workers were replacing the old memorial monument with a forest of metal tubes—some sleek concept by the firm Northrop Grumman Space and Missions Systems. Together with the new headquarters about to open up, it was all part of the beautification of our over one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old agency. Our façade was being polished and refreshed, yet the bureaucratic loopholes kept tightening, the brass was aging, and our crime labs were still understaffed and overburdened.

We walked past the fenced off area and inside the building. Under the skeptical brows of the watch officer
s, two cameramen were wrestling their equipment through the metal detector. Satish and I snuck right behind them and took the elevator down to Property Division, where all evidence from cold and closed cases was stored until they could either be officially released or used for court proceedings.

An officer checked our badges
and scribbled our numbers on the visitor log. She looked neither black nor white, neither young nor old. Her inflection was from the valley, her stance from the city.

We walked down a long corridor
. The waiting room to Jail Division was located at the opposite end, and we could clearly hear the bickering of family members in line to visit their relatives. A man shouted he’d been waiting for more than an hour to see his son. An officer replied his son had been waiting in the joint for more than one year, so he could wait a few minutes longer.

The evidence room was small and windowless. Four boxes
sat on a round, metal table. They all bore the LAPD stamp and the additional labels, “Charlie Callahan, case ID XCV56, submitted by Det. C. Henkins.”

“The evidence on the Callahan case, as you requested,” the officer said. “All his personal items are here. We contacted the family to see if they wanted it, but they
replied we could burn it all.” She gave us a quick glance that meant, “Do you have any questions?” Relieved to see that we didn’t, she took off.

Satish hooked his hands on his belt and took a deep breath. “Well—looks like we’ll be
in here for a while.”

I leaned across the table and pulled one of the boxes closer.

“Look at the bright side,” I said. “Chances are, by the time we’re done, the news crews up on our floor will be long gone from Parker Center.”

Satish flopped on the chair across from me, loosened the knot of his tie, and pulled out the field reports. “They’ll come back,” he said. “They always do.”

We sorted through the victim’s clothing, field notes, pictures, crime sketches. In the inventory, we found Callahan’s apartment floor plans marked with all the places from where evidence had been taken.

“What’s in the box that says ‘Digital’?”

I craned my head and looked inside. “CDs. Couple of jump drives.”